Meet Bishop Eaton

The Rev. Elizabeth A. Eaton was elected as the ELCA’s fourth presiding bishop at the 2013 ELCA Churchwide Assembly. Born in Cleveland on April 2, 1955, Eaton earned a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School...

Luther and Lutheranism

Martin Luther was eight years old when Christopher Columbus set sail from Europe and landed in the Western Hemisphere. Luther was a young monk and priest when Michaelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel in Rome...

ELCA Good Gifts Catalog

Assignment Process

Assignment completes candidacy for all people, including those ordained in another Lutheran church or Christian tradition, moving them toward first call and admittance to the appropriate roster in the ELCA...

Maria, a nurturer

Advocacy Ministries of the ELCA

​By Sarah Dreier, Legislative Representative of International Policy for the ELCA and The Episcopal Church

Maria spoke very little English, and I speak no Korean. But the
wisdom that shone in Maria’s eye instantly inspired my trust. So I
climbed into her van, along with two of her employees (sex industry
survivors) and her young son, and the five of us drove into the heart of
one of Seoul’s red light districts.

“Stay alert — we will need to run if the men catch us!” Maria conveyed to me in broken English.

As I stepped timidly out of the van (which Maria had parked in a
narrow alleyway), I watched Maria scamper from one window to another,
each of which displayed a young woman. She handed each prostitute a hair
barrette with the phone number for Maria’s women’s shelter hidden
inside. Maria and her phone are inseparable; she knows that she may only
have one chance to connect with the sex workers who call her, eager to
escape the indentured servitude of the red light district.

The next day, Maria welcomed me into her home. It was a safe haven
she shared with those she has rescued from the sex industry, and with
the newborn baby who had been abandoned by his mother. (Like many women
and girls, this little baby’s mother had been broken by the confluence
of forced drug addiction, physical abuse, and emotional degradation; she
disappeared shortly after her son was born.)

Maria and I sat in a quiet little room and prayed together. We held
hands and meditated in silence, even as the sounds of a crying baby and a
busy house swirled around us. Maria looked profoundly content and
grateful.

And I thought of another Mary, the mother of Jesus, amid the hustle
and commotion of Jesus’ birth: “But Mary treasured all these words and
pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). Like Mary, Maria is a nurturer,
dedicated to caring for the women and girls who have suffered the
tortures of gender-based violence and abuse.

I’ve met many other nurturers in my travels: the sisters of a
Lutheran friend and colleague who generously welcomed me into their
crowded Nairobi home; the women of the Episcopal Church of Cuba who
cared for me when I fell ill; the former Sudanese refugee — herself
expecting a child — who shared her own challenging refugee story with me
and with members of Congress in hopes that we may protect those who
remain in conflict zones. These generous women have nurtured me, a
stranger, and it saddens me that our world does not afford them the same
courtesy of safety and support.

Gender-based violence is a pernicious global phenomenon that takes
many forms, including domestic violence, rape and sexual assault, forced
prostitution and sex slavery, female genital mutilation, forced child
marriages, assault on the basis of sexual orientation, dowry crimes and
honor killings, infanticide, and gender discrimination. An estimated one
in five women experiences rape or attempted rape and up to 70 percent
of all women will experience gender-based violence from men in their
lifetime (for more information, click here).
Women in developing countries experience particularly high levels of
violence, where cycles of poverty, hunger and insecurity make them more
vulnerable to violent assault and abuse.

“We all must do better to protect women and prevent this pervasive
human rights violation,” says Michelle Bachelet, executive director of UN Women, announced in preparation for next week’s gathering.

This year during the United Nations Commission on the Status of
Women, I will remember the women Maria has saved and supported, and how
their lives have been affected by gender-based violence. The Commission
on the Status of Women can serve as a reminder that we must all work
together to nurture those who have nurtured us and to protect those
women and girls who, like Maria’s survivors, are in desperate need of
care, support and safety from violence.

Maria and her family of survivors crowded around the entrance to
their shelter. Watching their smiling faces as they waved goodbye, I was
amazed that something as nurturing and life-giving as this community of
women could conquer something as abhorrent as the sex industry.

This is Christ's church.

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